Paranormal series: Eek a ghost or wait right here, I’ll be back with a camera.

Ghost below the Sunset?
Ghost below the Sunset? (Photo credit: Scott M Duncan)

The problem with the paranormal is that finding decent evidence is difficult.  Ghost don’t seem to come when called, and poltergeist certainly don’t seem to want to do their stuff before the camera. We can’t seem to remote view with accuracy and no one seems to be able to prove that out of body experiences are genuine.

Personally, I think that unless you’re in the right place at the right time, it would be very difficult to get something that would be irrefutable proof.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at YouTube for any video that looks genuine. Most are, unfortunately, fake.  Some are nice and spooky, but nonetheless, fake.

It seems to be extraordinarily hard to get photographic or video evidence of something that is paranormal.

The evidence tends to be vague or apocryphal. There are way too many ghost videos or stories that can easily be fabricated or have factors that just don’t add up.  (I would like to look at some of these in future blogs and critically evaluate them.)

It seems that nearly every ‘legitimate’ video is either extremely grainy, jerky, or could be falsified.

When you think about it, each year, millions of hours of video are taken by people nowadays in all walks of life, including movie studios, and from all that footage, the best we can come up with is grainy or vague videos where the action always seems to occur just out of shot.

Now, personally, I do believe there are spirits, and I do believe people see them. I just don’t believe most of the footage I’ve seen of them.

Of course, ghost aren’t the only phenomenon about, there are also UFO’s creature sightings, poltergeist, conspiracies and a dozen other things that simply seem to evade any real proof.

Most evidence is faked on built on a house of cards and it hurts the credibility of things that are real, but are hard to prove.

I have seen one photo back in the mid-80s (before digital cameras and Photoshop) that had a picture of a baby and on its side was an extremely old lady’s head. It looked genuine, and I’ve no reason to suspect otherwise. What’s more, it was incredibly clear. Sadly, the technology didn’t exist to get a copy back then.  I would have love to have an analysis done on it.

But such photos seem to be rare and many are clearly faked.

I suppose what bothers me is that people accept what they see without questioning it. I believe that we should question everything because things are rarely what they seem to be, and even if you think you know the answers, there is often another level to uncover.

As most would know, I’ve had plenty of weird experiences and personally, as I’ve said before, it’s a temptation to try and not look at them critically.

I feel it’s important to be critical about them, though not cynical, as that implies that you already know the answers.

For my own experiences, I look to see if there are other explanations.

When two or more people share the same memories of something, did they arrive at the same conclusions independently?

Unfortunately, it is way too easy to influence someone’s answer or memory and a lot of my own shared experiences can be called into question because I might have influenced others on some level.

Fortunately, not all, though.

Finding decent evidence is the bane of us who believe in the paranormal, and really, if I was a skeptic, I would be having a wonderful time poking holes in everything I said I experienced. (Which is fine, because I love laughing at myself!)

If anyone has come across something they consider to be proof, please let me know. I would love to see it and give my thoughts about it.

A genuine video or photo that can clearly show that it’s real would be the holy grail of paranormal evidence.

Paranormal experiences series: Switching videos or I know I’m getting older but…

Cover of "Holler/Let Love Lead The Way [U...

So, I decided to go looking for a music video that I had seen back around the year 2000, that I wanted to see again.  While YouTube certainly has many detractors, one can’t deny that it’s a wonderful source for finding those obscure and lost songs you thought you’d never hear again.

The video in question was Say My Name by The Spice Girls.

When it was released, I saw it while I was waiting in the waiting room of the doctor’s office where the television was showing the top 40.  Video was average, but I liked it.

So much so, that the next week, I was back in the same place, same time and I waited for the video to be shown, and it was. So I watched it and enjoyed it and Say My Name was firmly cemented in my mind.

But wait a minute, Gary, you might be thinking. Destiny’s Child sang Say My Name, not the Spice Girls.  You must be mistaken.

And normally I’d agree with you. However, when it comes to music, which was an obsession of mine, I do tend to remember songs pretty clearly. I associate memories and feelings with songs. Every other memory I have of music videos and songs is accurate.

When I heard Destiny’s Child’s version of Say My Name, I thought to myself that I liked Spice Girl’s better. They somehow had put more into it. I also assumed that The Spice Girls had done a cover version, as it was clear that the song was attributed to Destiny’s Child.

So,  as I was watching something on YouTube, Beyoncé was mentioned, which reminded me of the video I liked, and so I did a search for it… and came up empty.

No problem, I thought, though I did have a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right. So, I searched every possible way to try and find even a mention or vague reference to it. There was nothing. I checked out the official video by Destiny’s Child, but that was nothing like the one I saw, and of course, didn’t sound like the version I remembered either, plus I was certainly I had not seen that video before either.

I know my memory isn’t that bad when it comes to music. I can remember words and songs from when I was a very young age, and should I look them up, I find I remember them almost verbatim.

Upon further investigation, I found the song Holler, which contains that video, but the music is different.

In fact, I do not recall ever hearing that song before.

I mused that maybe both videos followed each other, but the release timing seems to be out for that, at least for two weeks in a row.

As a one off situation, I would put this down to faulty memory.

But… is it a faulty memory or something more? I’m prepared to say, yeah, faulty memory, but then, there were other incidences in my life that make me wonder… and that leads to some intriguing stories.

Those will be explored next time.

Next: Memories of something that didn’t happen.